Gutenberg feels bare without it

I’m quite a big fan of Gutenberg, having used it recently to do a complete site redesign for a large-ish site I inherited (78 pages in Qode’s Bridge theme, no theme updates for 5 years, and I don’t have backend access) After a lot of fiddling with WP Bakery Builder and the current setup, I realised it just wasn’t doing what I wanted to do. Little borders appearing, inconsistent responsiveness. Anyway, I Googled around and watched some YouTube videos. Elementor looked de facto, but doesn’t work with the older versions of Bridge theme. Then I came across Kadence Blocks used with Gutenberg, played with it for a couple of days, loved the swoooshy look of block dividers, the way the Kadence Blocks interacted with the Reusable Blocks in Gutenberg, and had a full redesign done and the site updated (yes, all 78 pages converted from Bridge/Bakery to Kadence) in 2 days.

Kadence Blocks adds so much to Gutenberg, and the free version, which is what I’m using, adds invaluable things like Info Boxes and Advanced Headings as well as Testimonials and consistent icon layouts for lists. The Row Layout is incredibly accessible, and enables elements to be dragged’n’dropped en masse from a standard layout into one side of a 2:1 column with an icon, or info box for “READ MORE” It also makes the site considerably faster to load, is better for responsive layouts for headings with backgrounds (no text bleeding out of boxes) and just generally snappier in terms of editing, previewing and getting the redesign realised.

I found the whole process hugely enjoyable and I have a full set of Reusable Blocks from “Top Squiggle with Menu” to “Row with Testimonial” to “Two column Squiggle Info” which allow me to blob together a new page in an exact style layout in a couple of minutes.

Highly impressed!